Story code: ST-000493
Part 2: The Blue Paint
Marcus shoved the screen so close that Arthur had to lean back against the display rack to focus. The shaky footage looped back to the beginning. Through the tinny phone speaker, Arthur heard a voice that sounded exactly like his own. The digital Arthur stood towering over the girl on the ground, waving a menacing finger.
“You stupid little brat, you darted right out in front of me!” the voice on the screen roared. “You’re lucky I don’t drag you by your hair to your parents!”
Arthur stared at the pixelated face on the screen. The man wore the same gray cardigan Arthur had worn the day before. He drove the same silver sedan, the license plate clearly visible in the glare of a streetlight. But the anger twisting the man’s features was feral, completely alien to Arthur’s quiet demeanor.
The camera panned down again. Arthur finally recognized the sobbing teenager on the wet asphalt. It was Chloe Evans, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the high school football coach. She wore her blue track uniform, now torn and stained with blood around the knees. A crushed bicycle lay mangled under the front tire of the silver sedan.
“Marcus, I swear to you,” Arthur stammered, raising his hands, his palms sweating. “I wasn’t at the grocery store last night. I closed the pharmacy at six and drove straight home. I ate dinner and went to sleep.”
Marcus did not soften. He pulled the phone back, his thumb hitting the screen to pause the horrific loop. “This was posted at midnight. It’s got eighty thousand views on the county Facebook page, Arthur. Chloe is in the hospital with a fractured collarbone and a concussion. Her dad is out of his mind.”
“But it isn’t me!” Arthur pleaded, feeling a cold sweat break out across his forehead. He reached out to touch his neighbor’s arm, but Marcus jerked away as if Arthur’s hands were covered in acid.
“Don’t touch me,” Marcus snarled. “We’ve been neighbors for twenty years. I trusted you. My kids trusted you. Now I see you hitting a child with your car, screaming at her while she bleeds, and driving off.”
“Driving off? No, Marcus, please listen-”
“The whole town is watching this, Arthur,” Marcus interrupted, his voice a harsh whisper. “The police went to your house this morning, but you’d already left for work. The only reason Coach Evans hasn’t torn this pharmacy down brick by brick is because he’s sitting by his daughter’s hospital bed.” Marcus pointed a thick, calloused finger at Arthur’s chest. “Lock your doors. Call a lawyer. Because if you stay in this town, I won’t be the one knocking on your glass next.”
Marcus turned on his heel and marched out into the rain, letting the heavy glass door slam shut behind him.
Arthur stood paralyzed in the greeting card aisle. The damp chill of the store seeped into his bones. Hit-and-run. Screaming at a bleeding child. It was impossible. He tried to search his memory of the previous evening. He had driven home. He had eaten a frozen dinner. He had fallen asleep in his armchair. There were no missing hours, no blackout.
Desperation seized him. The video showed his car crushing Chloe’s bike. If it was a fake, if someone had doctored the footage, his car would be perfectly fine.
Arthur sprinted toward the back of the store, his dress shoes slipping slightly on the damp linoleum near the ruined delivery boxes. He threw open the heavy steel security door. The cold rain hit his face immediately.
His silver sedan sat exactly where he had parked it at six-thirty this morning, tucked into his reserved spot in the alleyway.
Arthur jogged through the puddles, his breath coming in shallow, frantic gasps. He rounded the driver’s side, praying to see pristine silver metal. He stopped short, his stomach dropping into a bottomless void.
The front right bumper of the sedan was heavily caved in.
Arthur dropped to his knees in the muddy gravel, ignoring the rain soaking through his trousers. He ran his trembling fingers over the deep indentation. Scraped into the ruined silver paint were stark, undeniable streaks of bright blue-the exact shade of a high school track uniform, or a teenager’s bicycle frame.
“No,” Arthur whispered into the downpour. “No, no, no.”
He touched the headlight casing. It was cracked, the jagged plastic edges sharp against his thumb. He looked down at his own hands, searching for any sign of a struggle, any memory of an impact. Nothing. His mind was perfectly clear, yet the physical evidence screamed of a violent collision.
A sudden, sharp shattering sound erupted from inside the pharmacy.
Arthur flinched, scrambling back to his feet. He rushed through the steel door, locking it behind him, and hurried down the center aisle. Shards of safety glass littered the floor near the front register. A large, jagged landscaping rock sat squarely in the middle of a spilled display of vitamin bottles.
Through the spiderwebbed hole in the front window, Arthur saw the street. The heavy rain had not deterred the crowd. At least twenty people now stood on the opposite sidewalk. Some held umbrellas; others simply let the rain soak their coats. The teenager in the black hoodie was among them, still holding his smartphone up, the red recording light glowing like a tiny, hateful eye.
Next to the teenager stood Coach Evans, his broad shoulders heaving, his fists clenched tight enough to split the skin. He was not looking at the teenager’s phone. He was staring straight through the broken window, locking eyes with Arthur.
Arthur backed away slowly, his foot crunching loudly on the broken glass. He reached blindly for the landline on the counter, intending to dial for help, before remembering he had yanked the cord from the wall.
Before Arthur could bend down to reconnect the phone, the flashing red and blue lights of a police cruiser washed over the brick storefront, casting long, frantic shadows across the pharmacy walls. The cruiser did not park on the street. It drove directly up onto the sidewalk, blocking the pharmacy’s front door entirely.